Telecommunications services are an integral part of business and personal life, allowing geographically remote users to communicate irrespective of location and to form and maintain relationships. Communications between users may assume a variety of formats, such as, for example telephone calls, e-mail messages, instant messages, pages, and voicemail messages.
There are situations when the timing of a communication is crucial. For example, friends and family typically look forward to and often expect messages that recognize special occasions, such as holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, etc. A message sent to recognize such an occasion, however, may not have the desired effect if the message is not delivered at the appropriate time. In particular, a message sent well after an event has passed often must assume the form of an apology.
Additionally, being aware of an occasion ahead of time may be of little consequence if such awareness does not coincide with an appropriate time for acknowledging the occasion. In many cases, a person may be aware of or remember an upcoming event too far in advance to send an appropriately timed message. For instance, a birthday message delivered to a person more than a week before the person's actual birthday may call into question the sender's knowledge of the actual birthday.
In general, telecommunications services strive to deliver messages as quickly as possible from a sender to a recipient. As described above, however, there are times when sending a message to a recipient should be delayed. On the other hand, by delaying, the sender runs the risk of forgetting to send the message entirely.
Accordingly, users would benefit from a communications system that enables messages to be appropriately scheduled. While certain existing communications systems used in business, allow a delivery date to be assigned to a voicemail reply, enhanced messaging scheduling features are needed to address the evolving needs of consumer customers.